With today's emphasis on fuel savings and green energies, aerodynamics continue to be a priority of most vehicle design engineers. In accordance therewith, vehicle designs undergo many stringent wind tunnel tests that study the effects of air moving past solid objects.
Many years ago, wind tunnels were initially used as a means of studying airplanes in flight. Since then, emphasis on fuel efficiencies has prompted use of the wind tunnel in the design of land vehicles as well. The wind tunnel was envisioned as a means of reversing the usual paradigm. Rather than a moving a vehicle through still air, the wind tunnel moves the air past a still vehicle. Moving the air rather than the vehicle enables an engineer or researcher to more effectively study and manage aerodynamic effects.
In addition to aerodynamic effects, wind-tunnel testing is often applied to land vehicles to determine ways to reduce the power required to move the vehicle on roadways at a given speed. In the study of land vehicles, interaction between the road and the vehicle plays a significant role in performance and results. Thus, this interaction is taken into consideration when interpreting the test results. In actual scenarios, the roadway is moving relative to the vehicle but the air is stationary relative to the roadway. In most wind tunnel tests, air is moving relative to the roadway, while the roadway is stationary relative to the test vehicle. In order to address this phenomenon, some automotive-test wind tunnels employ moving belts under the test vehicle in an effort to approximate real-world conditions.
Today, aerodynamic hoods, roofs, skirts, etc. are employed to lower wind drag of land vehicles. There exists an ongoing need in the art to continue to develop aerodynamic products and designs that enhance wind drag efficiencies.